


Galls in August

by fleece



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, References to Depression, Trolls on Earth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 07:18:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7035424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleece/pseuds/fleece
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Terezi makes a slow start towards rebirth, prompted by Jade and a peculiarity of summer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Galls in August

Terezi flicks out her cane a little too hard as she slinks away from the last attempts of the seatbelt to restrain her, tired, groggy, her senses still dulled from Jade's loud CDs and louder singing, the endless loops of green- brown- green- brown open space surrounding the five, like dead stretches of plains back on Alternia, her nose's linings about to crack from dehydration and the car's fan on high that found a way to blow directly into her face no matter how much she adjusted the little shutters in Jade's horrorterror of a vehicle.

"Here," Jade says, tossing a water bottle at her. She's sitting on the curb and trying to wriggle one foot into a sock while failing to inch the other into a sneaker. "Drink up! We've got loads of fun ahead of us."

"I will rescind my negativity when you demonstrate sufficient evidence for that," Terezi says. She's not too grumpy to steal away Jade's sock with her cane and flick it upwards before cracking open the water bottle.

"Oh my god, Terezi, ugh!! You got my sock stuck in an oak!" Jade's yelling, dog-intense, is echoed by screeches from the tree. "And you pissed off a scrub jay, they're the worst!"

Terezi, perception slightly restored by the gullet confiscation of most of the water, watches in satisfaction as her own angry scrub jay scrambles up the tree in a desperate rescue attempt.

-

They'd left SoCal when it was still dark, Terezi scribbling out a clear list of rules to prevent chaos in the apartment while she was gone before darting into Jade's car. Terezi was SO HYP3—but she'd never been in a moving vehicle for over an hour and the hundreds of miles Jade drove for were enough to denature her enthusiasm, newly sparked as it was from the mire she'd been in for the past few months.

"Well, you're bored, I'm tying up my fieldwork, I can come get you next week and you can hang out in Davis with me for a while," Jade had said the week before, blurry through a shit internet connection and an even shittier laptop screen that was damaged in a contest between Nepeta and Karkat over the remote control.

"I doubt I will be any less bored in a rural town! We live next to the UC here, I can't see why yours would be any different," Terezi had said, tapping some glitter onto her freshly painted hind claws. Red on red. Uninspired. And a small-scale isolationist hobby. She considered her feet. She was feeling weird lately. "Students and booze, big deal!"

"I just think it'd be fun to get to know you better! And Davis is full of- weird shit, you know? There's a toad tunnel," Jade said, gesturing with a spread that was, frankly, irresponsible.

"Oh," Terezi said, disgusted, "please tell me you did not base your choice of graduate study on continuing affection for frogs."

Jade yipped and blushed as Terezi jeered half-heartedly. But she did feel- a little different. A visit could be worth a try.

-

Something drops on the point of Terezi's horn. It's Jade's sock, covered in dust and stiff leaf fragments.

"HAH!" cries Jade, perched at the intersection of a couple of branches. "There! I survived your petty challenge. Though, now that I think about it," she said, peering down, "I'll probably need your expertise in getting back down. Didn't you live in a tree?"

Terezi, turning away in an affectation of disdain, notices a tiny popping noise underneath the hum of afternoon traffic and the murmur of trees. There are tiny spheres in the gutter, shuddering, jumping, shaking as if in anticipation of a calamity. Terezi briefly feels like His Honorable Tyranny, and then goes to exercise her might by showing Jade a successful tree escape plot.

Later Jade explains they're galls, or "basically little safes for baby wasps!"

Terezi smiles, remembering basic schoolfeeding, life cycle diagrams of the standard troll. 

Jade continues, "They're cute, right? Different species have different shapes, like chocolate kisses, or wrinkly brain matter—gosh, I have so much to show you here! I'll get you interested in things again if it kills me."

"I feel your death may be called for, if you don't restrain yourself for my delicate condition," Terezi says, smacking Jade's shin with her cane. "But I accept your dare."

Terezi, generous, lets Jade kick her back.

**Author's Note:**

> Another rush fic to qualify for the Ladystuck Remix. Geh!


End file.
